The victors in Divisions One, Two, Eight and Nine in last night's (October 16) Rocky View County Council  elections all agree on two things.

First, campaigning is virtually a full time job and second, voters in the county were looking for change.

In Division One which includes the southwest part of the county and Bragg Creek, Mark Kamachi defeated Enrique Massot by a significant margin. Kamachi says the voters he engaged with definitely wanted change.  

"There;s so many stories in our division, when, as soon as someone thinks about having to deal with Rocky View Council, it's such a negative reaction.  I used that to campaign and it was a great opportunity to sort of push the reset button.  The turnout was huge and the people spoke."

Kamachi says respect is a big thing for most people as he found during his campaign.

"One of the things I was really holding true to is a reflection of my dad.  He said 'work your butt off, work hard and respect other people'.  People were saying that communication has been lost.  I talked to people for the first time and they may have said 'I'm probably not going to vote for you' but at the end of the conversation they respected and appreciated being able to be heard and I think that's one big thing right now is for people to get the fact that, I'll listen to you, I may not have the same viewpoint, but I will do my due diligence to come back with answers that are best for the division."

Kim McKylor scored a hard fought victory over incumbent Jerry Arshinoff in Division Two representing Springbank, winning the seat by a mere 23 votes.  She too says that hard work carried her campaign over the top and believes change was on most people's minds.

"I spent a lot of time talking to people and knocked on virtually every door in the division and I think people were just wanting a change.  I think that sounds very typical in any election but I think our whole council has been very divisive.  I think people just want a very cohesive council moving forward and I hope we achieve that." 

McKylor thinks Springbank has changed demographically and voters recognized that.

"We have a lot of young families moving into our area and their needs and wants are different than the folks who moved in 25 years ago and I think that we haven't necessrily recognized that our demographic has shifted and our needs have shifted.  I think that voice is what voted tonight.  We need to be more inclusive of our seniors, we need to be more inclusive of our younger demographic and still recognize that we've got this middle demographic, folks like me that moved out here to be away from the big city and try to preserve as much of that as we can."

In Division Eight representing Bearspaw, Samanntha Wright  won over another incumbent, Eric Lowther.  Wright says she spent four to five hours every day knocking on people's doors and talked to 95 percent of people in Bearspaw.

"Getting in front of people, asking them what they thought, engaging with the people and responding to peple in a timely fashion.  It was a tough race, I knew it was going to be seriously close.  The last time I lost by 21 votes so I was prepared for it to come down to the wire again."  

Wright says what the people of Bearspaw were looking for was not changing the feel of the community from country residential.

"We've all bought into an ideal.  We've all bought into a country residential community that has open spaces and dark night skies.  It's the acreage living, that's what most people have said.  They're more afraid that the current council was not listening or adhering to the policy we currently have and were just lookinhg for every single exception to the rules and not following the rules we currently have."

Crystal Kissel pulled off a seeming upset in Division Nine, Northwest RVC and Cochrane Lakes when she defeated not only incumbent Bruce Kendall but also former Rocky View Schools Board Chair Colleen Munro last night.

Kissel finished nearly 250 votes ahead of Munro and 320 ahead of Kendall. 

Prior to the election Kissel said, "I want to be an informed, effective advocate for Division Nine residents.  When they phone with a concern, if I don't have the answer, I can say to them, 'look, I don't have the answer but I'm going to find out for you.'  It's not enough just to ask the questions, we need to be able to give good information to the residents of our district." 

.Rocky View County Councillors will vote for the Reeve and Deputy Reeve at their first council meeting on October 24th.